


Like A Dance Step You Forget

by clockworkrobots



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag, M/M, Season/Series 09
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-23
Updated: 2013-10-23
Packaged: 2017-12-30 07:28:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1015812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkrobots/pseuds/clockworkrobots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A coda to the last scene of 9.03. This begins right after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like A Dance Step You Forget

  
"You can't stay here," Dean says, shoulders tense, eyes closed and drawn. Castiel almost thinks he mishears him. This shed of hope that he indeed  _has_ is what keeps his face from falling completely.

He frowns, fists clench--such a human mannerism, he inwardly notes, but ever more distantly--and asks, "Why?" Dean's words are still ringing in his ears too much to hear if his own voice cracks.

Dean looks down at his hands, now clenched around each other in his lap. His knuckles are turning white. "Cas, I--" he begins, and then pauses, clenches his jaw. After a taut, terrifyingly silent moment, he starts again. "I can't protect you. That thing, back there? You coming back? That was _sheer luck_ , man. That's..." he trails off to chuckle mirthlessly. "That's a once in a lifetime thing now."

Castiel's frown deepens. Castiel has never expected Dean to be his saviour. Wasn't it always supposed to be the opposite? Castiel could almost understand Dean rejecting him because he is no longer powerful, as he was, that he no longer can protect _Dean--_ not in the same way, at least. But this is absurd. He says as much.

"I'm not asking for you protection, Dean. And anyway, isn't this place heavily warded? I remember observing several engraved sigils within the architecture the last time I was here. Plus, I _told_ you, I had the required sigils tattooed with what money I could manage" he points out, trying not to rise from his seat with the vehemence of the objection. 

"I know, Cas, it's..." Dean trails off, shakes his head. "Look, do you really wanna be trapped here 24/7 because it's too dangerous to go outside?" Dean looks at him, eyes sad and pleading with him to agree. "This place is big, but it's not _that_ big, you'd bet bored, antsy. You just became human, man, you should get a chance to you know... see a bit of the world with fresh eyes."

Dean is right to think that Cas would feel trapped if he were relegated to being underground for the foreseeable future, but it angers something indignant and violent inside him that that should be his only other option. "And what if I'm killed again?" he bites, tired of this discussion already. "I'm far less protected out there on my own than I am in here. Do not pretend this is still about safety," he says, and levels Dean with a stare, daring him to deny it.

"Cas, I'm saying you would get so bored here you would _need_ to leave. Hell, I would _hate_ to keep you caged here. But outside, me and Sam? We're _beacons_ for you, and you for us. The whole of heaven knows I'm the fastest way to get to you, and the whole of heaven is out for your head. I'm saying we're dangerous for _each other_."

Dean is right, of course, they _are_ dangerous for each other. But that has _always_ been the case, ever since Castiel rebelled and died for the first time all those years ago. From the first moment he touched Dean in Hell, he was lost, wasn't he? They have _always_ been dangerous, a mercurial mixture of elements never meant to stay in contact so long for fear of a volatile explosion. 

But they have weathered those, too.

Castiel sits back in his chair, tired and resentful that all of that seems to mean so little now, in the face of their current fragility. "Whatever happened to wanting me, 'cursed or not'?" he says quietly, remembering many a moment when Dean convinced him they could take on _anything_ if it was together. He remembers purgatory, cold and cruel, and Dean's determination shining like a sun in that desolate place, so bright it almost blinded him.

Suddenly, a rages bubbles up inside him.

"Cas--"

" _No_ , Dean," he cuts him off, hands curling around the wooden armrests of the chair as he pulls himself up to sit straight, ready--a warrior's posture. "You know, I thought I was just beginning to understand your reticence with me the last year, as you became ever more ambivalent about me the more I went away," he muses, bitter that such a revelation has to come at such a cost. "I had thought..."

Dean looks at him, eyes wide and scared at where this conversation might be going. "What?"

"I thought you wanted me here," Cas says, sanding up to leave. Resignation weighs down his limbs, but he battles against it so he can leave with some dignity. "With you. Beside you," he adds, because for the first time in a long time, Castiel had thought that they had wanted the _same things_. "I thought I finally understood."

He doesn't push in his chair. He begins to walk away but barely makes it a step when Dean's hand shoots out and grabs onto his arm. 

"I _do_ Cas. Fuck--" Dean looks as lost and tired as Castiel too feels. " _Of course_ I want you. I'm not saying--dammit," he shuts his eyes, scrounging his mind for the right words. His grip gets tighter. "I'm not saying I don't want you to--" he sighs, frustrated. Finally he opens his eyes again and stares at Castiel, bare and vulnerable. "Do you even have _any idea?_ "

"Clearly not," Cas snaps, unsympathetic to Dean's scrambled message. "It seems I'm at a loss for everything now."

"You--" he starts, stops. He takes a deep, shuddering breath. "I didn't say I don't want you to stay. I said you _can't_. Because it's too dangerous. Cas, I--I want you so much I can't go through you dying again. I _can't_. And what would happen if you stood over _my_ dead body?" he posits, as final proof that Castiel must go. In this precise moment, Castiel hates him, that he knows just where to push.

Because he's right. Castiel cannot protect Dean anymore, not as he would want, and not well enough to heal fatal wounds and be the impenetrable shield in any crossfire. He has only his sword to speak of the soldier he once was. His face falls, merely imagining his devastation making a sour, churning feeling broil in his gut.

Dean notices, and _Castiel_ notices now, with him standing up too, they are rather close. "Exactly," he says, with an ugly tone of finality. "Cas--God. We're so... _bad_ for each other. Everyone knows it."

Castiel almost wants to laugh, but he is too exhausted and drained to do it. "A good friend once told me: 'If there is anything worth dying for, this is it.'" He notes Dean has still not removed his hand from where it's curled around his upper arm. He raises his gaze to catch Dean's, imploring sincerity to shine in them. "You are worth dying for to me, Dean."

Dean's response is to grimace, as if pained. "I'm not. You shouldn't--"

Castiel kisses him.

He doesn't know where the impulse came from--except he knows exactly where. He knows it's something borne not of his new discovery of the joys of "hedonism," as he'd said when boasting about his sexual experiences--no. It's something _older_ , bigger, long yearning to burst forth. He kisses Dean and into the soft give of of his lips he says every argument he wishes he had words to say, every plea, every apology lost on his tongue from _years_ of misunderstandings.

Castiel kisses Dean as both a goodbye and a hello, and he hopes that Dean hears him.

"By whatever mystery of metaphysics," he says, voice worn and rough, ragged by what feels like years of talking. "I am human, or as much like it as I will ever be. I have my own wants Dean. Irrational, terrible, terrifying _wants_ that threaten to burst out of my skin. And I _want you,"_ he tells him, as plainly as he can manage. He raises a hand to cup Dean's cheek, and thinks of the woman he'd met in a church, not days ago. "We can fear death or have faith in each other."

"I'm not a man of faith, Cas," Dean croaks.

Castiel regards him solemnly. "Neither am I," he admits, and looks down, rueful. "What a pair we make."

" _God,_ you--"

Something makes Dean snap, and before Castiel can drop his hand (not that he would ever want to), Dean is grabbing his face between both of his, and kissing him hard, fast, sharp and desperate.

Castiel responds immediately, mouth opening to encourage Dean's tongue, hand searching for his hair so he can thread his fingers through it and bring Dean closer, closer, _needing_ to be closer.

"Yes. _Yes,"_ he says, answering an unasked question that bubbles up in his chest. _Yes, I do believe I am alive,_ his heart sings.

_I am, I am, I am._

" _Please,_ Dean," he says, somewhat desperately, voice coming in short, staccato breaths. He doesn't know what he's asking for--except where he _does_ , in the most wordless way of love. _Please, let me love you,_ his lips say, as he tastes salt at the corner of Dean's mouth.  _Please, love me back_ , he asks, by the tightness of his fingers as he grips Dean's shirt, as they curl around the back of Dean's neck, pressing. _Please feel my pulse in my hands and know never more than in this moment am I_ alive _._

"I can't believe you had sex without me," Dean breathes into the stubbled side of his cheek when he breaks away for air. It is not an accusation, though, for Dean has had lives and lovers apart from Castiel, too. It is more _disbelief_. How strange it is that Dean should not be his first, when he has been his first for so many other things. Dean may not be Castiel's first lover, but he is his first _love_. First in the way of the major scale, the first mode plucked into the new strung strings of his heart. First in the way that Castiel doesn't know now if he has a soul, but regardless, the first soul that was ever his was Dean's.

"I must admit," Castiel begins, leaning their foreheads together, eyes closed as their bodies hum together. "I did think of you. What it would be like, to touch you like this," he strokes his hand through Dean's short hair to curl it around his ear, thumb rubbing at the curve of it. "I thought of you and then I only wanted _more_."

Dean makes a guttural noise that sounds like anger, but it is not at Castiel. It is for _himself,_ he thinks. There has always been a lot of anger in Dean's mourning and regret. 

"I wish we had more time, there's--" He kisses him, willing the words come forth through the connection of their kiss. "Fuck, there's so much I could show you, Cas. Do to you, make you feel--"

"I do, I _do_ , Dean," Cas interrupts. "I _feel_ \--" He's cut off by another kiss, and then another. 

Castiel doesn't finish his sentence with language, which is too much and not enough for them anymore. Instead, he finishes it with motion, a new language entirely, one who's vocabulary he's steadily learning but one he knows Dean is a lexicon of.

_Warm._

Dean's cheeks are hot and his mouth is hotter, and his hands even more so, as they burn Castiel's skin every place they touch. His feeble, unprepared heart beats wildly in his chest as every piece of him awakens, is _remade_. Castiel is molten metal and Dean's hands are _moulding_ him, press by press, touch by touch. 

He feels Dean creep a hand up under his shirt, raising it so his fluttering stomach is exposed and open to being explored. Dean drags his burning fingers across the skin of Castiel's back, unfolding like phantom wings that streak a blazoned trail across the sky.

_Amazed._

Castiel's hand's find the expanse of Dean's torso, too, lifting up his shirt above his head to reveal the chest that Castiel carved from the power of his own grace. Castiel shucks his sweater than shirt as well so that they are both standing sweaty and shirtless, cocks already hardening in their pants as they collapse together finally after all these years.

_Alit._

They consume each other like an argument. Castiel pushes at Dean's shoulder and taunts him with the wet drag of his mouth across his jaw, pushing Dean back so that his behind jabs against the edge of the library table. Dean grabs at Castiel like he's daring him to just _try_ and get away, but Castiel won't, not until Dean asks again, and for now, the only sound he wants to hear are their clipped sighs and sort gasps as they fall apart, skin against skin.

Dean leans against the table top and pulls Castiel against him gracelessly, groaning into his mouth as he does. Castiel wonders if for Dean, his fingers feel like fire, too.

_Alive._

Castiel has limited experience with human sexual arousal, but even if he had none he would know what it means that his cock is straining in his pants to be touched, that the stiff presence poking into his thigh when he leans into Dean speaks of similar things.

"Dean," he says, breathlessly and overstimulated, prompting Dean to lead him. Dean takes cue gladly, unzipping Castiel's pants and his own with remarkable speed, freeing their cocks to the awkward friction of their position.

But the sensitive nerves in Castiel's cock require nothing of perfection, simply the pressure and heat between them, he thinks, will do, as he feels some pre-come dribble forth. He bites down where he was in the middle of kissing his way down Dean's neck when he feels Dean's hands wrap around them both, sloppy and messy but it's still the best feeling Castiel has ever known as Dean's breaths come hot and humid in his ear and he races to pull them over the same precipice. 

The rest is a blur of dim lamplight and glistening, sweaty skin, and in the last moments before his climax Castiel's mouth finds Dean's again, swallowing both their gasps and hitches of breath, grounding himself in Dean as he flies apart.

  
***

  
After, though, nothing has changed, even after everything that _has_.

Castiel wakes up in Dean's bed to find it empty of his friend, and a cold shiver washes over his naked shoulders. He thinks, foolishly, that maybe if he never arises from this mattress he will never have to go, that the bed will remember the shape of him so much so that Dean will have to concede that Castiel has carved out a worthy spot in Dean's life.

He is awake, but he chastises himself for such absurd dreaming.

When he finds Dean, dressed in new clothes he discovers Dean had lain out for him (though old in the sense that he's pretty sure these clothes are Dean's--a part of him delights in the privilege), he looks just as sad and withdrawn as he had at the start of yesterday evening.  

As much as a part of him wants to rebel still, reject Dean's proposal wholesale and refuse to leave, a bigger part of him couldn't bear the burden of being so unwanted a risk. Dean was right to provoke the defensive protector in him. He honestly couldn't bear leading Dean and Sam to otherwise avoidable harm.

But before he goes, Dean hands him a phone. "You'll call, though, right? If you get into real trouble?" he says, a familiar sadness to the resigned squaring of his shoulders.

Castiel has heard these words before.

That last time, before his stubbornness and hubris engulfed him, and he broke open the walls of purgatory and broke apart any trust him and Dean had shared that was left, Castiel gave him no answer before he flitted away, distracted by more pressing things like Crowley than to have time for Dean's concern. He does not want to repeat his mistakes of that time, as in many ways he is still living in the aftermath of them. "Of course," he says instead.

As he takes the phone from Dean's hands, their fingers brush. His chest feels strained and he feels unable to say much of anything at all as he makes his exodus to the surface, exiled by his only friends and unsure of his future.

But he does know this: he _will_ see him again--Dean and Sam both, indeed. If he has learned anything worth remembering in his fraught existence, it is that things only end to begin.  _We die to be resurrected,_ he thinks, as Castiel has twice, in quick succession, proved.

He's pulled from his thoughts, however, when he feels a buzz in his pocket where he stowed away Dean's parting gift (the money, Dean had pushed into his hand, Castiel carries in the bag of clothes Dean had also insisted he take with him). He pulls it out, and squints at the screen until he can figure out how to unlock it.

It's a text, from Dean.

 **Dean W.:** _we can still, u know, talk_  
 **Dean W.:**   _like this_

What should make him feel happy, a tentative line of contact with his friend, initially makes him feel _angry_. How unfair is it that Dean should send him away but then reach out for conversation as if he hadn't just insisted Castiel leave his home? 

 **>** _Somehow that seems a bit cruel to the both of us,_ he writes back, taking his time to work the touch screen, as well as give him a chance to breathe.

It's a few more minutes before he gets any sort of reply.

 **Dean W.:** _ya maybe_

A beat, and then the phone vibrates again.

 **Dean W.:** _but maybe im too much of a bastard to care_

Castiel's grunt of anger dies in this throat. He clenches his jaw, appalled at himself that he is giving in so easily. He remembers the warmth of Dean's hands from last night and yearns to be back with him, but if he cannot, some kind of virtual touch will have to suffice for now.

Fallen and then eclipsed, Castiel is now a waning moon. But he knows well the celestial cycles; as it is in Heaven, so shall it be on Earth. Soon the sun will shine on him again.

 **>**   _In that case so am I_ , he writes, hands feeling weak still, but steady.

 **>** _What a pair we make._

 

 


End file.
